Being Pregnant and Having a Baby

Gen was 25 when she became pregnant, and it was her first pregnancy. She was in a committed relationship but not married, and felt a jumble of emotions including fear. Gen knew that she would want children one day, and longed for the "boundless happiness" that she believed would accompany parenthood (Redrappa, 2015). At the same time, Gen was still in graduate school. Her debts were piling up and she and her boyfriend occasionally argued about finances. At first, Gen refrained from telling Rob the news. She was worried that the pregnancy would create conflict in their relationship, and then Gen realized that it was only a matter of time before she had to tell him. She was utterly unwilling to have an abortion, partly because she knew that eventually she did want to be a mother but also because she felt the "spark of life," as she put it, growing in her.

Rob had similarly ambivalent feelings, it turned out. He was concerned mostly about finances but also about the tremendous changes the baby would bring to their lives. The pregnancy did strain their relationship, and two years after baby Olive was born, Rob and Gen broke up. As a millennial, Gen did not fear being a single mother as much as people in previous generations. The society might still be patriarchal, but is becoming less so. Women like Gen have been taking back their power, not just as mothers making their own decisions and being financially self-reliant, but also in terms of making the decisions that affect their children. In spite of her determination to be independent once she and Rob broke up, Gen reflects on her pregnancy and the decisions surrounding the birth with a keen eye for gender issues. Gen was determined to use a midwife and have a home birth. Rob supported this decision, and fully agreed that a home birth would be best for them as well as for the baby. They relished the opportunity to bring the child into the world, not in a clinical environment but in the comfort of its future home.

Unfortunately, not all the stakeholders agreed. Both Rob's and Gen's parents disagreed with the couple's decision to use the home birthing method and urged them to undergo a traditional hospital birth. The conflict between generations and their views on childbirth created significant stress for Rob and Gen. The more Gen read about midwifery, the more she became convinced that home birth was the best option for her. The conflicts between the medical model of childbirth and the traditional midwifery approach highlights the gender issues involved in pregnancy as well as the status differential between men and women in society. As Simmonds, Rothman & Norman (2007) point out, "the history of patriarchy colors our understandings of birth and family," (p. 7). The medical model inherently strips power from the mother; whereas the midwife model empowers her.

Ironically, surrogacy can be a form of empowerment too. As Rudrappa (2015) shows, the decision to carry a child for someone else is undertaken relatively frequently in India. Surrogate mothers experience the same types of "ambivalence" that expecting parents like Gen and Rob do (Rudrappa, 2015). The issue of globalized surrogacy raises several concerns linked to social class conflicts, gender roles, and the commodification of babies. As with in vitro fertilization, surrogacy calls attention to the future face of childbirth. The decision to become a parent can be made with numerous options that were not available a generation ago. Gay male couples can opt to use a surrogate like those in India, to carry child with one or the other father's sperm. Likewise, a lesbian couple can have a child together through in vitro fertilization with one mother carrying the child. The options for infertile couples have also increased with advancements in medical technologies. Emerging technologies and techniques are empowering, but they continue to raise ethical questions related to who has access to these techniques and also related to the continued need for parents willing to adopt children who have already been born.

The pull to have a biological child is inexplicable. Gen claims that she cannot articulate exactly why she felt drawn to becoming a mother. She knows several women who have chosen to be childfree, and claims that they told her they have no "biological urge" to have a baby. Until recently, women did not have the choice of whether or not to have a child. Women would have been ostracized from their community if they decided to resist the social norm of marrying and especially having a child. Childbirth has traditionally defined the role and identity of women. "The birth of a baby is also the birth of a mother," (Simmonds, Rothman & Norman, 2007, p. 161). For those women who opt out of motherhood, their identities must be constructed in other ways, such as through career attainment. Others, like Gen, opt into the best of both worlds. Gen is studying to be a chemical engineer, a role not traditionally reserved for women and a career that will undoubtedly consume her as much as graduate school does.